Frozen Rage: A Hellequin Novella (Hellequin Chronicles) by Steve McHugh

Author:Steve McHugh [McHugh, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

To say that Viktor had been murdered was doing the word murdered an injustice. He’d been nailed to the side of the barn with two-foot-long silver daggers through his wrists, his feet had been cut off, and another dagger had been rammed up under his chin into his brain. There was a large pool of blood under him, and from the looks of the arterial spray on the wall where he’d been nailed, Viktor had been alive when his feet were removed.

“That’s a lot of effort to kill one person,” Tommy whispered as we stood in front of Viktor’s corpse while Gordon instructed half a dozen realm staff to safely lower the body to the ground.

“They crucified him, cut off his feet, and then stabbed him under the chin,” I said. “What’s the point? And why cut his feet off? Why crucify him? The effort alone would be huge.”

I looked around the area, which was beginning to get a larger and larger crowd that were being held back closer to the castle by a combination of Tommy’s people and the realm staff. It was getting late and most of the stable-hands had been cleaning out the stalls or seeing to the animals. Viktor had been killed in a spot some distance from the main stable.

“How did no one hear him scream?” I asked.

“Hello,” Tommy shouted, getting everyone in the nearby area to turn around and look at him. He waved and turned back to the grizzly scene. “I think people would hear screaming. No one is so mentally strong that they can withstand being crucified, having their feet removed, and from the looks of him, having the shit kicked out of them first.”

“Who found the body?” I asked.

“Stable-hand,” Gordon said. “Poor kid is only nineteen. No one should ever see shit like this, but at nineteen, it’s unthinkable.”

I spotted the stable-hand in question, Sky crouched before him at the far end of the stables. She’d given him a large mug, probably coffee with lots of sugar. The kid looked like he might vomit at any moment, but to his credit he was answering questions.

“How did no one hear?” I asked.

“He was drugged,” Gordon said. “I can smell it. Same stuff in Victoria.”

“Manticore venom,” Tommy said.

“An insurance policy,” I said with a sigh. “We’re pretty sure that Varol was the target in the forest.”

“Don’t know him,” Gordon said, washing his bloody hands in a nearby bucket of water, which quickly turned red. “He worked for Vlad the Impaler a few centuries ago. And that was one person the world could have done without. I’m all for laying waste to your enemies, but I’m not sure that murdering your own people just to show your enemies how crazy you are, is a long-term strategy.”

“It worked,” Tommy said.

“For a while,” Gordon said. “And now he’ll forever be known as a monster. Or hero. It really depends on who you ask.”

“Okay, moving on,” I said. “We need this entire place in lockdown. No one comes, no one goes.

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